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Global Marketing

How to Promote Your Business On a Shoestring

Ever since I could remember I have aspired to someday be an accomplished entrepreneur. In middle school I used to sell blow-pops for .25, that was my early hustle. I’m constantly thinking of what I will be doing with what I learned in this MBA program. Unless there’s a brilliant plan that attracts venture capitalists there’s – it’s all grass roots hustle and it taking some good ol’ elbow grease to show product or idea value. In most of these cases I would imagine that marketing will be on a shoestring budget.  In doing some research, I came across an interesting article with advice on marketing on a shoestring budget.

shoestring

Article bullets:  1) Plan you attack; 2) If you don’t have  a website, get one set up; 3) Set up a free listing for your business in the search engine local directories.

After reading this, I thought to myself – these are all obvious, I was thinking it was going to reveal to me some little know secrets about marketing at low cost on a practical level. Like maybe certain print centers that give steep discounts, or marketing on certain websites that provide huge exposure, etc…

In my opinion, marketing in today’s environment is a heck of a lot easier and in some was harder. Easier in the sense that there’s social media outlets and everyone and their grandma can be a blogger and has the equal potential to influence the masses. On the harder side, people has so much more junk to filter through because of how saturated the internet has become.

marketing

The marketing landscape has changed dramatically and will continue to do so in the near future with internet age. Much marketing can be done at a lower cost now, more than every before because of things like social media.  I think any business without a website and or other social media accounts are foolish and are possible losing out significantly on market share. Believe it or not,there are plenty of old-school business owners that do not yet have websites and are still marketing themselves in the yellow pages. With things like Yelp, Angie’s list, etc… it’s so much more web focused. Baby-boomers are rapidly realizing that to continue success you can’t just relay on word of mouth and being on the first two pages of the yellow page section of their industry.

What are your thoughts on lost cost marketing, is it more accessible in today’s environment? Also, what are your thoughts on the landscape of today’s marketing?

Best,

Bryan and Nabih

 

 

 

 

3 replies on “How to Promote Your Business On a Shoestring”

Generally Marketing today is much easier form marketing in the past because all the information you need available in the internet not only this but even if you want some statistics you can get it on line from professional people with full information about the marketing you are targeting .
However no doubt there are difficulties in todays marketing , but it dose not make todays marketing  harder than yesterdays marketing .   

Bryan, Nabih — really terrific post! I think at its core “marketing” is still the same concept — getting the point of differentiation out to the masses (even if targeted) to make the sale — how a business person uses the tools, mediums and vehicles today (however widespread) will be the trick. There really is an art and a science to pulling an efficient, hardworking go-to-market plan together – I think if the homework has been done and the best, most profitable behaving target market has been identified (and I don’t mean the upper high income strata of the population — dare I say “the 1%” – I mean the best customer fit for the product being provided) the marketer is at least on the right path.

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